Monday, June 25, 2012

Sample from Ehaema. For more information, please contact the author---In the days before the red rain fell, and the harbingers came to lay waste to everything wonderful and everything good, there had lived a strong hunter who lived with her siblings in the sheltered heart of the Grove. She was the youngest, but also the quickest of eye and the sharpest of nose, and when the day’s eye closed and Mother Twilight spread her skirts over the land and blushed, then the strong young hunter rose with her brethren to search the world for love and food. For the day’s eye judged them hotly, and in its burning gaze, the sky kings could hide and strike at them like lightning. The deep reaches of the night, with their mazing foxfire and hordes of watchful lurkers, were no better. So their day was the breadth of Mother Twilight’s bosom, while the kings went to sleep and the hordes were yet to rise. Wise travelers moved past the Groves quickly if the day were on the wane, and no foraging creature lingered long outside at that time. To see the widderschynnes dance of a flight of hunters, even in the distance, was to see death in buzzing wings and needle fangs and shrieking laughter. During full day the winged hunters slept, and during the full night they bided in the shelter of the Grove, whispering secrets and singing songs, and painting each other with the juice of strange fruits of phosphorescent colors that have long since left the lexicon of light. It is said that the oldest among them formed cocoons and slept within them for nine years, though no one agreed on what shape the creatures took when they finally emerged. Of all this, little is known and less is certain, and dwellers of the day have long since dismissed the tale as a fanciful lie from the dwellers of the night. But in the between times, when the Moon looked over her shoulder at the world below, the hunters would see her and hear her song, and they would find their second nature. We all have a second nature, hidden right behind the first, where we cannot see it. For the hunters, twilight was a doorway with intractable gravity. Every day like clockwork, it led them into a world divided very simply into things to ignore, and things that would be warm and good when sliding down the gullet.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Headed off the map this week. Time to get a little bit ahead. Everybody I talk to is under pressure lately. If you are too, try not to burn your neighbor when you vent. Go outside, open your head to the sky, let it all come up, and then let it go. And if you need me, look for me at the airport bar. Sometimes you just gotta fly.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Sample from Ehaema. For more information, please contact the author---The strike was a thing of beauty. Smaller’s four arms (there were four currently; the daemons’ forms were as fluid as thought) unfolded and reconvened to describe a perfect sphere, spiraling into being from non-equidistant points. As Larger stared rapt at the moon for which he longed, Smaller fluttered into place behind him like the shadow of a leaf falling from a tree. And the Lattice moved with him.His micro-kata generated a current within the tides of information; thoughts and concepts were drawn into a vortex of meaning, flooding into the negative space between his hands. The Notions that moved were obscured by the patterns that Larger was creating; Smaller deftly took advantage of this blind spot.It was more than a blow; it was a kinetic poem. A strike of meaning. An input in the Command Language. Merely to see it was to have one’s awareness excited, accelerated, so that a motion quicker than a blink looked slow and liquid. For an infinite instant, Smaller was a dancer striking a pose for the crowd.When he struck, two arms burst wide and two others thrust forward, magnifying and projecting the invisible sphere simultaneously. And the Lattice struck with him.“You”“Are”“Wrong”it said.The rebuttal scattered Larger across the sky.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

In the dream, you're at work on a weekend, and everything is dark although in weekday land, reality-land, you know it's always kept well-lit. There are voices describing an abstract problem behind you, and you're distracted because you're sort of listening to them but also working on something even though you're supposed to be working on something else. It's a dream, because you're eating fast food, which is something you did a lot when you were younger, but now you never do.

On the screen is a spreadsheet full of codes that are english in some columns and nonsense hash tags in others. There's another window. You click on one thing, it's a picture. You click on another thing, it's a song that you remember liking, that begins to take the shape of the words in your head. Which as you realize it, becomes you typing words directly.

Friday, June 08, 2012

Sample from Ehaema. For more information, please contact the author---The interior of Halliday’s house existed in the same time-bubble that its owner did. The furniture was largely deco; glass and plastic surfaces accompanied a variety of chunky, rounded furniture in whites or light pastels, and Nagel, Basquiat, and Warhol held pastel court upon the walls. The walls were alternately black or white; the carpet was white shag. The severe lines of a parallelogram couch were attended by the rounded forms of beanbags and an exercise ball, and the entire arrangement played perspective tricks with the eye depending on where one stood. As opposed to the chaotic swirl of the duplex, where new arrangements and newly scavenged furniture arrived and evolved on a weekly basis, the composition of this living area bespoke an obsession with precision, light and order.Time lapsed as they passed through the space. The ghosts of party moved, snuggled, and staggered through the room; shadows curled up on couches, laughed at bygone jests, smoked reflectively in the corners and sprawled indolently across the floor. People came together. People came apart. Day became night became day, filtered through the glass doors leading to the pool area and the cultivated, concreted desert beyond. The sun became the moon became the sun, and when daylight failed, colored light fixtures were born from recessed alcoves and ceiling tracks, causing the monochrome elements to bloom into technicolor dreamscapes. Green pastoral chairs grew under azure skies; golden tables beamed resplendent under lavender ceilings; laval orange carpets cooled under the blackest horizons, and within all of these scenarios were a host of partiers, actors playing roles that were older than they felt, and younger than they looked. They walked amongst the living room fixtures, through fields of light and reverie, and remembered things that other people dreamt, and saw things that they did not see.The garage was another realm entirely.

Stalkbox

Introduction of Sorts

I have had many names, in different times and places. They're not hard to discover; look in the Stalkbox if you're curious.

For the past year, I've been writing a novel in public. And I've finished!

You can read it, if you want, using the Archive widget below. You don't necessarily have to read it in order, but it begins on Leap Day of 2012 and moves forward from there. It ends in March 2013.

I really enjoyed that process; I might do it again, as soon as I've finished off a couple of smaller projects that are coming due. I do intend to do a revision pass and edit this into something more manuscript-like in the very near future. But for now I'm leaving this first draft up as it is, for people to enjoy, and for me to remember how it began.

For now, I'll place the occasional thought or musing here once or twice a week, just to keep the cobwebs from gathering.

In the bar below, you can click on the RSS symbol to add this blog to your feeds, or click on Message in a Bottle to receive an email version, if that works better for you. If there's a blog tool that you think should be down there, by all means let me know.

Thanks for visiting this place, outside of the other places. Spend as much time as you like. We'll see you again... won't we?